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Notes -
Is presidential corruption still culture war?
You may or may not remember that back in January of this year President Trump, in his personal capacity, sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion in damages related to leaks of his tax returns by a contractor back in 2018-2020. I don't want to dig into the merits of the case as such, except I'll note the legal discussion I've read seems to have a consensus that the case is very weak. It is also very unusual for a sitting President to be suing the government he is in charge of. There are obvious conflicts of interest involved. So much so the judge in that case issued an order for the parties to explain how they are actually adverse to each other, how they disagree, so that the cases and controversies requirement of the constitution is satisfied.
As of today, it seems we may never find out how good the claims are or aren't, how adverse the parties are or aren't. Trump filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss his lawsuit, pursuant to the establishment of a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund". It's not even clear to me the fund is going to be administered by the United States government, as paragraph C provides:
Is this going to be the new normal? If you're President and Congress won't give you the money you want to pay your friends and allies you can get however much you want with this one weird trick!
ETA:
ABC reports that the fund will be overseen by a five-member commission appointed by the Attorney General, but the members will all be removal at-will by the President.
This is old stuff, this is how lawfare is done. You troll around the courts until your party is in office, then you settle the case for yourself, and give billions of taxpayer money to "Charitable organizations" that happen to be your political allies, and that's how you fund your politics. The only thing that is new is that Trump is doing it on the Republican side, rather than this being a one-party thing due to the control of major cities.
Complain about corruption if you want, but no tool of lawfare stays in only one toolbox. The entire reason the left hates Trump is that he does politics back to them. They used the Deep State to leak private financial records? Now Trump hits back. After a hundred felony counts and the blanket decade-pardons, I don't ever want to hear a criticism of Trump's dirty dealings without the full disclaimer. It's not corruption when the other side has been doing it for eighty years, but it is very precious special pleading.
We used to have the question of "who was president in 2020?", now we have the question of "who was president in 2018?". He was the guy in charge! He's suing himself for his own administration's failure to properly secure information.
Is your contention that Trump ordered his own IRS to leak his financial records? Or was that part of the "resistance" so popular in the first Trump term?
It's his administration, I don't know what rules he or his appointees did or didn't have in place for protecting against leaks by employees but ultimately the buck stops with the boss.
This is nonsensical. Was Obama responsible for the Washington Navy Yard shooting because 'the buck stops with the boss'?
He wasn't responsible for pulling the trigger, but yes - as Commander in Chief Obama was ultimately responsible for both security at the Navy Yard and the security clearance system that allowed Alexis to keep a clearance despite his criminal and psychiatric records. This is the whole point of having a unitary executive - The Buck Stops Here, as the sign on Truman's Oval Office desk says.
That the US generally allows autolitigation is well-established law - if as owner-manager of your own company you injure yourself on the job due to your own negligence, you can sue the company for having a negligent boss. (And you might want to if the company has third-party liability insurance that will pay the damages). But there is a reason places like Lowering the Bar and Above the Law will post the casefile and publicly mock you for it.
It is also part of a consistent pattern of behaviour on the part of Trump. His 2024 campaign was almost as much against his own first administration as against the Biden administration. Both Trump and his supporters in the country think he wasn't really in charge in the 2016-20 period and shouldn't be blamed for what happened.
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